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What do you do when your younger self tells you he's gay? Also, you are a mutant

A question that could only come from comics.

By Susana Polo
Susana Polo is an entertainment editor at Polygon, specializing in pop culture and genre fare, with a primary expertise in comic books. Previously, she founded The Mary Sue.

Let's see if we can sum this one up. Fearing for the future of mutant-kind in dark times, Hank McCoy pulled the five original X-Men — Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Iceman and Angel — from a moment just after they'd been recruited by Professor Xavier to the present, so that their youthful idealism could remind the present X-Men what they'd been fighting for all along. But instead... the kid X-Men were so frustrated by finding out how much worse things were in the future that they decided to stay and make things better instead.

Sure, Brian Michael Bendis' All-New X-Men has a very comic book premise, but it's one that's been used to deliver on the ultimate promise of comic books — that if the reader will accept a crazy premise, they'll get compelling characters and storylines that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Case in point: Young Bobby Drake — Iceman — realizing that he's definitely gay, no matter how many questions that raises about Old Bobby, who's got a string of girlfriends as long as an ice slide.

Iceman Bobby Drake X-Men

Whether Young Bobby and Old Bobby were fundamentally different somehow because of time travel, or if Old Bobby was bisexual, or if Old Bobby was living a closeted life— or if the creators of All-New X-Men had made the misstep of presenting sexual orientation as a choice — remained an open question until this week's wrap up of the storyline in Uncanny X-Men #600.

The three pages Marvel offered as a preview to the issue show just the beginning of the conversation that happens when Bobby Drake comes out to his older self, and that's enough pages to tug at your heartstrings. It's one thing to feel like your life isn't one your younger self would want. It's another to look that younger self in the face as they tell you so. It seems that as of this week's issue, both Icemans are taking tentative steps out of the closet.

And they both agree that Angel is hot.